Whistle

Editor's note: A little boy wishes that he could whistle, and finally figures it out.Oh, how Peter wished he could whistle!He saw a boy playing with his dog. Whenever the boy whistled, the dog ran straight to him.Peter tried and tried to whistle, but he couldn't. So instead he began to turn himself around - around and around he whirled ...faster and faster ...When he stopped everything turneddown ...and up ...and up ...and down ...and aroundand around.Peter saw his dog, Willie, coming. Quick as a wink, he hid in an empty carton lying on the sidewalk.

The FBI is investigating a former University of Maryland contract worker who said he took College Park administrators' personal information from the campus network and posted online about the stunt to draw attention to major security flaws. David Helkowski said in an interview with The Baltimore Sun that he noticed vulnerabilities months before a February attack exposed nearly 300,000 sensitive records. Frustrated that issues continued even after he raised concerns while working on a university website, Helkowski said, he took the data to raise alarm.

In the latest vindication of the federal "whistle-blower" law, a settlement of civil claims against a contractor who defrauded the government brought $56 million back to the public treasury. Christopher Urda, a Binghamton, N.Y., auditor who alerted the government it was being fleeced, received $7.5 million because the False Claims Act provides a bounty of up to 25 percent of money the government wins back.That didn't sit well with Stuart M. Gerson, head of the Justice Department's civil division: "While I fully support the dual purposes of the [act's]

Imagine a bar with all-you-care-to-taste selections of more than 60 beers, 40 bourbons -- all for one flat cover. It would need to be a pretty big bar, say, the size of the expansive Cow Palace at the Maryland State Fairgrounds in Timonium? On March 21 and 22, the Beer, Bourbon & BBQ Festival came back to Baltimore, and the formula still works. "I love the variety of the beer, and the people, and just the fun atmosphere," said AJ Ferguson, a 30-year-old auditor, who came from Ocean View, Del., for the event with her fiance, Jared.

Federal investigators are checking an allegation that officials at Fort Meade illegally punished a whistle-blower who spoke out about alleged corruption on the base.Charles M. Johnson, a supply systems analyst in the Fort Meade Directorate of Logistics, said Wednesday that the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) is looking into his case."OSC is aware of allegations of reprisal at Fort Meade," said Paul Ellis, a spokesman for the independent federal agency that investigates reprisals against government whistle-blowers.

Though he did not participate in torture, ex-CIA agent John Kiriakou was the first person to publicly acknowledge the Bush administration's inhumane abuse of detainees ("The truth about torture," April 23). Mr. Kiriakou's disclosures informed the public and encouraged debate that helped pull this country back from a very dark place. But in doing so he drew the ire of the government, which began to harass and intimidate him and his family under both the Bush and Obama administrations, looking for ways to prosecute him. Finally, when Mr. Kiriakou privately shared a colleague's name to a journalist for use as a source, the government seized the opportunity and threw the book at him. Mr. Kiriakou is now serving 30 months in prison.

For a grown-up escape from everyday life, head to Envy Salon in Historic Ellicott City for Tini Tuesdays and Brew & Do Wednesdays. What started as a way to promote new business hours is now a highly anticipated weekly event at the 13-year-old salon. "We basically started it as something to drum up business on a new day of the week we were open, which was Tuesdays," says Leeza Rainey, owner of the salon. "So we started the martini night and found it was super-successful. " On Tuesdays, clients can enjoy a signature hot pink "Envy-tini," which Rainey describes as both sweet and tart.

When somebody blows the whistle these days, people listen.Backed by a sea change in public attitudes and expanded help from Congress and the courts, whistle-blowers are having a greater impact and gaining wider acceptance, their supporters say."Public opinion has changed over the past few years to value these people instead of viewing them as tattletales or malcontents," said Louis Clark of the Washington-based Government Accountability Project, which has been defending and advocating for whistle-blowers since 1977.

NEW YORK -- Swiss character, such as it is, seemed to be nastily revealed with the firing of a bank guard who told the world that his bosses were burning records of Switzerland's quiet theft of the accounts of Jewish families murdered by Nazis more than 50 years ago.But we have our own dirty linen. Ask Richard Barlow, living now in bitter exile in Santa Fe, N.M., who was fired and drummed out of Washington. His offense? He told the truth, a truth his superiors did not want to hear.Mr. Barlow, a Central Intelligence Agency employee working in the Pentagon, got his eight years ago for challenging official federal disinformation regarding Pakistan's development of nuclear weapons.

The director of a Pasadena group home for girls fired Tina Nickersonand six other child-care workers because they blew the whistle on abuses there two years ago, Delegate W. Ray Huff said yesterday.Huff, D-Pasadena, asked a House panel to extend whistle-blower protections enjoyed by government workers to private-sector employees like Nickerson, whose company was under contract with the state."When you hear six or seven people coming out (with complaints) at the same time, that's more than a disgruntled employee," he told the Economic Matters Committee.

As a kid, Terry McAulay watched football games on TV and practiced the moves he saw - not the spins and jukes of the players, but the gestures and actions of the officials. Hands on hips? Offside. Arms folded? Delay of game. At age 9, McAulay knew them all. "Terry would sit there for hours, mimicking every signal that the referees used," said Dene McAulay, his mother. "We marveled at [the pantomime]. He never said a word, he just did it. " Some day, he told his family, he would referee the Super Bowl . Sunday, McAulay will do that for the third time when the Denver Broncos and Seattle Seahawks meet in Super Bowl XLVIII in East Rutherford, N.J. It's the highest honor for an NFL official and a tribute that doesn't surprise high school coaches in the Baltimore area who dealt with McAulay, of Howard County, in his early years as an arbiter.

I'm a bit late, but I would like to lend my support to Melvin A. Goodman for his commentary regarding whistle-blowers ("We need more whistle-blowers," June 23). Whistle-blowers can make contributions toward better government. But now our government is making it too dangerous for most people to even think of doing this; we have become fearful of the consequences of criticizing our own government. "Dissent is patriotic" is to some degree no longer tolerated. I have recently heard that sales of George Orwell's "1984," in which "Big Brother" is constantly watching, have soared.

As a former co-worker of Thomas Drake, whose work I held in highest regard, I was deeply incensed to see his name linked with those of Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden ("We need more whistle-blowers," June 23). Mr. Drake was a mature, ethical, skilled professional and a true whistle-blower. He was not a callow youth with a dangerously limited understanding or appreciation of the intelligence community, or someone whose revelations were driven by personal ignorance and hubris. Mr. Drake saw a situation in which the National Security Agency was wasting valuable time, manpower and money designing and developing a project that, in many ways, duplicated existing systems that actually did the job better.

A major problem in the United States is not that there are too many whistle-blowers. Rather, there are too few. Where were the whistle-blowers when the CIA was operating secret prisons; conducting torture and abuse; and kidnapping individuals off the streets in Europe and the Middle East and turning them over to foreign intelligence agencies that conducted torture and abuse? Where were the whistle-blowers when the National Security Agency violated the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution against "unreasonable searches and seizures" and conducted widespread, warrantless eavesdropping?

Thanks again for giving proper coverage to the Trial of the Century ("Manning trial begins at Fort Meade," June 4). As a Pfc. Bradley Manning supporter, I am biased, but the court martial has attracted interest around the world. On Monday as the court martial began, I was outside the main gate to Fort Meade with other Manning supporters. In an opening statement, an Army prosecutor stated that Mr. Manning knew that the documents he released "would endanger fellow U.S. soldiers. " Such poppycock astonishes me, but the U.S. government wants more from Private Manning than just a pound of flesh.

I don't tune into Baltimore's morning news shows expecting hard-hitting, revealing interviews. Traffic, weather, softer features and a few nuts-and-bolts news stories are the usual order of the day. But WBFF's Patrice Sanders stopped me cold on May 24 with an interview she did with Baltimore City Schools CEO Andres Alonso in response to an audit that found tens of thousands of federal stimulus dollars had been misspent on his watch. Alonso, who is stepping down at the end of June, was defensive, combative and, in the eyes of some Facebook responders, insulting in calling Sanders a liar, denouncing her questions and denigrating the station.

Washington. -- One of the cheerier delusions of good government is that big federal departments can be forced to tolerate in their ranks those righteous, pesky people known as whistle-blowers. Might as well expect them to welcome their worst enemies to their most secret connivings.That's the lesson to be had from a congressional study of how government agencies have responded to the Whistle-blower Protection Act of 1989, a law designed to protect federal employees who expose wrong-doing on the job.The study, by the watchdog General Accounting Office (GAO)

WASHINGTON -- To hear Hughes Electronics Corp. tell it, there's only one thing worse than a tattletale -- and that's a tattletale with borrowed information.Now, the Supreme Court may be ready to hear Hughes' complaint that it was tagged with a fraud suit by a whistle-blower who made claims that the government already knew about.The federal law that protects whistle-blowers was supposed to encourage workers to point out secret misdeeds by their employers. Instead, some legal expert say, whistle-blowers are spurred by the prospect of getting rich and simply reporting what is already public or about to be voluntarily disclosed.

The Justice Department's secret review of Associated Press telephone records gives advocates for federal employees one more reason to doubt the Obama administration's full commitment to protecting whistleblowers, particularly those in national security agencies. Revelations about the department's broad prying into the work, home and mobile phone records of AP journalists in Washington, New York and Hartford, Conn., sent a chill through news organizations. Perhaps that was the point.

Though he did not participate in torture, ex-CIA agent John Kiriakou was the first person to publicly acknowledge the Bush administration's inhumane abuse of detainees ("The truth about torture," April 23). Mr. Kiriakou's disclosures informed the public and encouraged debate that helped pull this country back from a very dark place. But in doing so he drew the ire of the government, which began to harass and intimidate him and his family under both the Bush and Obama administrations, looking for ways to prosecute him. Finally, when Mr. Kiriakou privately shared a colleague's name to a journalist for use as a source, the government seized the opportunity and threw the book at him. Mr. Kiriakou is now serving 30 months in prison.